The present invention relates to food products and methods and, more particularly, to snack food products and related methods.
Snack foods are a staple part of the public's diet. Indeed, a not insubstantial amount of the public has displayed a penchant for “grazing” on small amounts of food throughout the day in lieu of eating regular meals. Not surprisingly, these conditions have fostered a burgeoning demand for a greater variety of snack foods, including snack foods such as fruit based snacks, that at least arguably have better nutritional value than certain other types of snack foods. Moreover, there remains considerable demand for snack foods that have a relatively long shelf life, are fit for immediate consumption, and are compactly packaged for easy storage and disposal. To this end, snack food products often contain snack foods that are wrapped in relatively compact wrappers which may only contain a few items of snack food or even only one “bite sized” item.
Pre-existing snack food products do, however, have drawbacks in terms of their suitability for immediate consumption, especially over the useful shelf life of the snack food. Specifically, various snack food products tend to be made in a manner that makes the snack food unacceptably messy to remove from its wrapper and consume. This is especially troublesome when one considers the wide variety of different environmental conditions that a snack food is ordinarily exposed to over a period of time. By way of example, a fruit-based snack food, typically has a tendency to undesirably adhere to its wrapper as the wrapper is removed from the snack food. Consequently, a portion of the wrapper may cling or stick to the snack food or the portion may even tear away from the body of the wrapper so as to leave a remnant attached to the snack food. The consumer then may experience sticky hands in attempting to remove the wrapper, not to mention the tediousness and overall messy experience associated with removing the wrapper. The frustrated consumer may also ultimately discard some or all of the snack food, thereby wasting otherwise edible food.
Accordingly, it should be appreciated that there is a definite need for a more consumer-friendly food product in which the consumer can relatively effortlessly remove the product from the wrapper and avoid having to deal with the unpleasantness of sticky hands and the unfortunate waste of the food product.